Ten Zen seconds Twelve incantations for purpose, power and calm

This winning book comes from the mind of the versatile Maisel, who is a family therapist, creativity coach, novelist, and nonfiction writer living in San Francisco. His 12 simple incantations-he also calls them "charms"-deftly fuse Eastern-derived ideas about mindfulness and breath awareness with contemporary Western notions of positive psychology and visualization. Maisel is straightforward about the brevity of his method: "Suffering is overrrated," he says. "I would prefer that you change your life in a day and not in a decade." These simple sentences, such as "I expect nothing" or "I return with strength," uttered with careful inflow and outflow of breath, stimulate awareness and change. Less, perhaps, about Zen than self-mastery and freedom from anxiety, these "charms" are certain to appeal to a broad range of readers. Highly recommended. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Night
I am going to teach you a centering technique that verges on the miraculous. You can dramatically improve your ability to center, become more calm and more powerful, and radically improve your life by taking ten-second pauses of the sort that I'm about to describe. You'll be amazed to learn that such a life-altering strategy can come in a span as small as ten seconds, but it can! Hundreds of my clients, and hundreds of volunteers, have used this technique to center, calm, and ground themselves while waiting in traffic, sitting in the dentist's office, preparing to record a new album, or readying themselves to talk to their teenager. They know firsthand that this technique works.
This ten-second technique has two components: a breathing part and a thinking part. The basis of Ten Zen Seconds is using a single deep breath as a container for a specific thought. First you practice deep breathing until you can produce a breath that lasts about five seconds on the inhale and five seconds on the exhale. Learning to do this will take you only a few minutes. Then you insert a thought into the breath, silently thinking half the thought on the inhale and half the thought on the exhale. This, too, will take you only a short time to learn. In an afternoon you can familiarize yourself with the program outlined in this book.
Excerpted from Ten Zen Seconds: Twelve Incantations for Purpose, Power and Calm by Eric Maisel All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.